Taruithorn Banquet 2010
I woke up this yesterday morning with a hangover. Luckily I went back to sleep and woke up this afternoon feeling much better. (Apparently I was slightly too out of it to do anything other than stare at the update window.) Saturday was the Taruithorn Banquet and I remember it very well indeed, thank you very much. It's just a little... honey-tinted. This time I didn't really have the spoons to help set up ; I went up for about three, having spent an indecisive hour deciding what to wear, and when I got there the dancing was just beginning.
I have written about the banquet in these metaphorical pages before - it's a big shindig hosted and run by the Oxford Tolkien society, with about a hundred people drinking, eating, dancing, and cooking and washing-up (in gleefully chaotic shifts) and the decoration is epic, gorgeous and entirely done by hand. There were lovely canopies of leaves and fairy lights entwined, and hand-painted wineglasses (of which I have ended up with six, somehow), carefully calligraphed placeholders, and banners hanging from the ceiling. It was very pretty, especially against the grey background of the day. I was wearing a black dress, amazing thick stripy purple tights, amazing purple shoes with leather roses on them, and my very favourite necklace (silver and garnets - a gift from shimgray to mark an occasion that wasn't Valentine's Day.) I was ready to enjoy self, yes.
Which, I have to say, I did. I love the idea of Taruithorn despite the fact I have never yet made it through Lord of the Rings, let alone anything else, and I love all the events, but I do find the banquet in particular a little unsettling - the demographic reminds me that I'm brown, shall we say - and on the whole, I didn't mind this; the food and the company were far too much of a resounding compensation. I wandered in around three, met teh_elb and proskynesis both looking beautiful, and lots of nice things happened after that. In no particular order:
-FOOD. Okay, so, food. There were starters - salads, which Elb, Gemma and I served (that was our shift, and I made much less of an idiot of myself than I did last year, when I was responsible for pushing around the mulled wine trolley, I think we can all guess how well that went, aha), and Elb didn't want hers, so I said, womanfully, that I would eat it. And Shim doesn't like rocket, so I kind of ate most of his, too. And then there were tapas, and I kind of maybe ate quite a lot of those. And olives. And amazing herb and cheese stars. And chocolate. And the main course, right, was an astonishing chicken pie with apricot and Moroccan spices. And I ate some of Shim's lamb and all of Elb's carrots. Om-nom-nomivore, yes. (I said this at the time through a mouthful of carrots to great hilarity. I am the most predictable person I know.)
It all came kind of unstuck, though, when I said in a moment of great foolishness that I would eat as many puddings as exactlyhalf. (Last year he ate seven! This year I managed chocolate pecan pie, apricot meringue roulade, some mousse, two large bites of baklava and some cheesecake before conceding defeat.)
-Dancing! Lots of it, highly structured, with plenty of scope for twirling, laughing hysterically, and stepping heavily the wrong way onto your beloved's foot. In the end we had three circles of dancers inside each other, all going in different directions, fairly often at unscheduled times. Oh, but the light was dim and the music a little hypnotic, and you twirl and flail and see fairy-lights above your head like explosions of stars, and it was lovely, lovely.
-DRINK. Mead, and wine, and elderflower cordial with wine in it, and some whisky, and I think we all concluded the evening in a fine state of inebriation. Just the right state, though - the one where you decide doing somersaults over bars is a good idea, and laughing at nothing at all. I managed to make Shim dance with me this time, something of which I am justly proud. Also, drink may have been involved with dr_biscuit discovering a new talent: impromptu, scientifically accurate raps on a given clinical sign. I received a four minute rap on mitral incompetence and another on hypothermia. It was enormously impressive. She's like a one-woman teaching aid, only cooler.
-STAGGERING INCOMPETENTLY HOME. I was hideously tipsy, Elb kept wanting to commune with bus stops, Shim had that resigned face he always has when he has to make sure I don't decide to live in the gutter, dr_biscuit did the very smart thing and poured us all into taxis. We got home safely and I got purple eyeliner onto the pillows and it was all so worth it.
...okay, I totally deserved the hangover. Thank you, banquet organisers, fairies and hoopy froods - your efforts were as extraordinary as ever. Thank you, thank you.
Today, perhaps not surprisingly, I am out of spoons in a big way. That said, I did manage to go to class, do some food shopping and prepare a plea in mitigation, and tomorrow the revision starts in earnest.
I have written about the banquet in these metaphorical pages before - it's a big shindig hosted and run by the Oxford Tolkien society, with about a hundred people drinking, eating, dancing, and cooking and washing-up (in gleefully chaotic shifts) and the decoration is epic, gorgeous and entirely done by hand. There were lovely canopies of leaves and fairy lights entwined, and hand-painted wineglasses (of which I have ended up with six, somehow), carefully calligraphed placeholders, and banners hanging from the ceiling. It was very pretty, especially against the grey background of the day. I was wearing a black dress, amazing thick stripy purple tights, amazing purple shoes with leather roses on them, and my very favourite necklace (silver and garnets - a gift from shimgray to mark an occasion that wasn't Valentine's Day.) I was ready to enjoy self, yes.
Which, I have to say, I did. I love the idea of Taruithorn despite the fact I have never yet made it through Lord of the Rings, let alone anything else, and I love all the events, but I do find the banquet in particular a little unsettling - the demographic reminds me that I'm brown, shall we say - and on the whole, I didn't mind this; the food and the company were far too much of a resounding compensation. I wandered in around three, met teh_elb and proskynesis both looking beautiful, and lots of nice things happened after that. In no particular order:
-FOOD. Okay, so, food. There were starters - salads, which Elb, Gemma and I served (that was our shift, and I made much less of an idiot of myself than I did last year, when I was responsible for pushing around the mulled wine trolley, I think we can all guess how well that went, aha), and Elb didn't want hers, so I said, womanfully, that I would eat it. And Shim doesn't like rocket, so I kind of ate most of his, too. And then there were tapas, and I kind of maybe ate quite a lot of those. And olives. And amazing herb and cheese stars. And chocolate. And the main course, right, was an astonishing chicken pie with apricot and Moroccan spices. And I ate some of Shim's lamb and all of Elb's carrots. Om-nom-nomivore, yes. (I said this at the time through a mouthful of carrots to great hilarity. I am the most predictable person I know.)
It all came kind of unstuck, though, when I said in a moment of great foolishness that I would eat as many puddings as exactlyhalf. (Last year he ate seven! This year I managed chocolate pecan pie, apricot meringue roulade, some mousse, two large bites of baklava and some cheesecake before conceding defeat.)
-Dancing! Lots of it, highly structured, with plenty of scope for twirling, laughing hysterically, and stepping heavily the wrong way onto your beloved's foot. In the end we had three circles of dancers inside each other, all going in different directions, fairly often at unscheduled times. Oh, but the light was dim and the music a little hypnotic, and you twirl and flail and see fairy-lights above your head like explosions of stars, and it was lovely, lovely.
-DRINK. Mead, and wine, and elderflower cordial with wine in it, and some whisky, and I think we all concluded the evening in a fine state of inebriation. Just the right state, though - the one where you decide doing somersaults over bars is a good idea, and laughing at nothing at all. I managed to make Shim dance with me this time, something of which I am justly proud. Also, drink may have been involved with dr_biscuit discovering a new talent: impromptu, scientifically accurate raps on a given clinical sign. I received a four minute rap on mitral incompetence and another on hypothermia. It was enormously impressive. She's like a one-woman teaching aid, only cooler.
-STAGGERING INCOMPETENTLY HOME. I was hideously tipsy, Elb kept wanting to commune with bus stops, Shim had that resigned face he always has when he has to make sure I don't decide to live in the gutter, dr_biscuit did the very smart thing and poured us all into taxis. We got home safely and I got purple eyeliner onto the pillows and it was all so worth it.
...okay, I totally deserved the hangover. Thank you, banquet organisers, fairies and hoopy froods - your efforts were as extraordinary as ever. Thank you, thank you.
Today, perhaps not surprisingly, I am out of spoons in a big way. That said, I did manage to go to class, do some food shopping and prepare a plea in mitigation, and tomorrow the revision starts in earnest.